Burning Bright

Damian turned away, made his way down the echoing corridors toward his own suite of rooms. The palazze’s floors were seamarble, quarried from the uninhabited, and uninhabitable, Midseas Islands; his footsteps sounded hollow on the green-veined stone, and he found himself stepping lightly, trying not to wake the distant echoes. The automatic lamps lit at his approach, fretted globes held in fantastic sconces, and closed down again after he had passed, so that he walked in the center of a moving tunnel of light. His private rooms were at the northwestern corner of the palazze, where short domed towers sprouted like mushrooms, looking out over the old city toward the rising mass of the Landing Isle and Newfields. As he approached them, the security board outside the main door lit, and chimed softly for his attention. The lights glowed green and yellow among the wide leaves and thick clustered fruit of the frieze of sea grape carved around the doorway, spelling out a familiar pattern. Even so, Damian Chrestil slid his hand into his pocket, curled his fingers around the familiar shape of his household remote, feeling for the control points by instinct. He trusted Cella as much as he trusted anyone, but it was as well to be prepared. He palmed the device, cutting off the system’s programmed announcement of his presence, and let himself into the suite.

Cella was waiting in the reception room, as he’d known she would be, in the corner of the room under the arches that held up the main tower. Moonlight poured in through the window on her left, draping her with the shadow of the fretwork tracery outside the window, drawing blue fire from the seabrights scatter-sewn across her fractal-lace overskirt. Behind her, the Old City was spread like a faded carpet, the regular lights of square and street broken by the darkness of the distant reservoirs and the unlit lines of the Straight and the Crooked rivers and the velvet texture of the parklands. She was wearing a violet bodice above the lavender and silver lace, dyed raw silk cut close to her full breasts, rising and sweeping outward to expose her shoulders; braids of the same clear violet were woven into the glossy black of her hair. The double light, the moonlight and the city lights behind her, rounded even further the lavish curves of her body. Damian Chrestil caught his breath as she turned to smile at him, and saw the faint pulsing light of an orbiter rising over her shoulder from the pens at Newfields. It was perfectly timed, it had to have been timed, and he knew he should laugh, tease her for it, but the effect was too perfect, good enough to convince even him. Then she took a step forward, and he saw from the look on her face, the uncalculated, crooked grin so different from her usual cool smile, that effect was the last thing on her mind. He blinked, but touched the remote to light the wall lamps and opaque the windows, and said aloud, “What brings you here, Cella?”

Her grin widened. “You told me,” she said, “you told me you wanted Ransome back on the nets, and by the very God, he’s back.”

“So?” Damian was suddenly very tired, not in the mood for games or the Game. “So you’re good. I knew that, it’s what I pay you for.”

Cella tilted her head at him, still smiling, but turned away toward the sideboard bar. She ran her hands across the carved border of lions and deer, fingers working deftly on the disguised controls, and then extracted bottles and two ice-lined tumblers. She poured two drinks, ardentecut with the sweet-and-sour syrup distilled from sugarwort, and brought one across to him. The ice in the tumblers cracked sharply as the warmed ardentehit it. She said, over the random noises, “But I didn’t do it, Damiano. He came back on his own.”

Damian lifted an eyebrow at her, and settled himself on the long, low chaise, deliberately stretching out his legs to keep her from sitting beside him. Cella smiled, not the least put out, and seated herself demurely in a willow-work chair opposite him. She might, from her expression, have been the perfect salarywife greeting her corporate husband.

“I’ve been trying to lure him in, get him interested—I even botched a scenario on his account—but he’s been too damn careful.” She grinned suddenly, lopsidedly, an expression as unexpected as her attempts at respectability. “Or at least too busy with those story eggs of his. I was beginning to think you’d do better to commission one, Damiano.”

“But he came back,” Damian said. “Do stick to the point, Cella, I’m tired.”

One eyebrow flickered up in mute but pointed question, but Cella said only, “That’s right. He came back because there’s a new notable in town, and she had the temerity to play one of his Grand Types. And she did it well, too. So I think Na Ransome will have his mind on the Game for at least a week—that’s how long this woman is going to be here. Or maybe longer. When I left, he was buying Rulebooks, and I haven’t heard of him doing that in years.”